GENERAL PAPER 2001

2. Examine the causes and effects of the problem of street children in Uganda.

3. What measures should be taken to protect wetland areas in Uganda?

4. 'Beauty contests in Uganda should be abolished.' Discuss.

5. Suggest measures which any one east African country could take to ensure food security.

6. 'Dialogue other than militarism is the best way of resolving political conflicts.' Discuss.

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SECTION B

Answer one question from this section.

7. Study the information provided in the table below and answer the questions that follow.

URBAN - RURAL HEALTH STATISTICS FOR SELECTED COUNTRIES (1991 - 94)

INDICATORS

KENYA

SENEGAL

BANGLADESH

INDONESIA

Urban

Rural

Urban

Rural

Urban

Rural

Urban

Rural

mortality rate for children under 5 yrs per 1000 live births

75.4

95.6

101.8

184.2

114.3

153.2

83.7

116.4

percent of children between 12 and 23 months with all vaccinations

80.9

78.3

64.9

40.4

70.4

57.5

65.2

40.9

total fertility rate

3.4

5.8

5.1

6.7

2.7

3.5

2.6

3.2

percent of females over age 6 with no education.

13.5

29.1

50.6

88.7

34.0

50.0

15.5

28.7

Adapted: world resources (1996-7) AGuide to the Global Environment: The Urban Environment: UNDP, The World Bank, p.32.

Questions:

a) What is meant by the following terms?

i) "mortality rate"

ii) "fertility rate"

b) State the country with the:

i) Highest,

ii) Lowest

Mortality rate.

c) Explain the relationship between education and:

i) Fertility rate,

ii) Vaccination rate.

d) Use a group bar graph to represent the percentage mortality rates for the countries shown in the table.

e) In your opinion, why are there differences in mortality rates between urban and rural areas?

8. Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow, using your own words and rural possible.

On the morning of October 3, 1989, 18 year old Monica Young nearly seven months pregnant with her second child, walked into the Medical University of south Carolina in Charleston complaining of abdominal pains. Her girlfriends, she said, had accidentally kicked her in the stomach. The hospital, a sprawling, state run complex whose various clinics constitute a medical safety net for many of the area's impoverished residents, admitted young for observation and tests. Included was a urinalysis, which the hospital had recently begun administering to any woman suspect of taking drugs during her pregnancy. The results positive for cocaine.

The second of six children, young was raised and still lives on Charleston's largely poor and black east side. It is a neighbourhood of ramshackle houses, dirt yards, and garbage - strewn vacant lots - a place that is easy walking distance yet light years in spirit from the gracious antebellum homes and elegant shops of the city's postcard pretty historic district. Young admits that she was using cocaine but never more than a couple of times a week, she insists. Yes she had heard that the drug could pose dangers for the baby growing inside her. But she says she was running with an older crowd that seemed to think it was okay "falling behind the girls" is how she put it. "I saw them do it and i just wanted to experience it. I was just living for myself. I wasn't facing reality."

Two days later her admittance to the hospital, young was forced to face reality when two Charleston policemen came knocking on her door. "Are you Monica Young?" the officers asked as they entered her seventh floor room."Yes", came the surprised response "We have a warrant for your arrest." They said. The charges possession of cocaine and distribution of drugs to a person under 18. (In the past, the South Carolina courts have treated a viable foetus as a human being). And with that, Monica Young, some 28 weeks pregnant, was handcuffed, escorted downstairs, and placed in a patrol car waiting at the hospital door.

Later that day, still in handcuffs, bound now by iron shackles around her ankles as well, young was led before Summary court judge Jack Guedalia. He set her bond at $80,000. "I felt I had to put her under some sort of control so that she would not harm the unborn child." Guedalia would later explain. "I had to think. She was given hot water mixed with cornstarch.

Finally, Patricia Kennedy, a private lawyer who had agreed to handle her case on a pro bono basis, convinced Guedalia to reduce the bond to personal recognizance. Young was freed on the strict condition that she live under house arrest, save for daily visits to the country's outpatient drug program for treatment and testing. The message was clear. One way or another, Charleston would stop Monica Young and pregnant women like her from using drugs if it meant locking them up.

Monica Young and a growing number of women around the country, nearly all of them poor, many of them black, are guinea pigs in a new and fiercely controversial social experiment known as "foetal abuse" prosecution. Spurred by mounting public frustration over the rising toll of "coke babies", more and more prosecutors, in many cases with cases with full co- operation from local doctors and hospitals, are bringing the power of the criminal justice system to bear on what once considered a purely medical matter what a pregnant woman chooses to do with her body.

The prosecutor's actions, proponents say, are a bold and necessary response to an increasingly grim social reality. Approximately one in ten newborns in the United States are exposed to illegal drugs in the womb. In particular, cocaine and its more potent smokable derivative, crack, have been claiming women of child bearing age at an alarming rate, drug abuse experts now believe that roughly one half of the estimated half a million crack users in this country are female. (In contrast, women account for a third or less of all heroin addicts.) As a result, prenatal cocaine abuse, especially in the poverty stricken inner cities where crack use is concentrated, has skyrocketed. In New York City, for instance, health officials say cocaine abuse among pregnant women has increased 3,000% over the past ten years. And although the research on the effects of cocaine in Utero is still in early stages, it is increasingly clear that a woman who uses cocaine even occasionally while she is pregnant runs at least some risk of causing serious damage, in some cases death, to her unborn child.

The most serious consequences, researchers believe so far, are impaired foetal growth and premature delivery, both of which hike the odds of infant mortality as well as the slew of complications associated with low birth weight mental retardation and lung problems, among others preliminary studies have also linked cocaine to spontaneous abortion, to small head size and birth defects such as genital urinary deformities, heart defects and brain damage and to sudden infant death syndrome. In addition, there is some evidence that maternal cocaine use may put children at greater than average risks for a whole host of long range developmental problems, including learning disabilities, personality disorders and emotional withdrawal.

So far, few cities have chosen to follow Charleston's lead in actually imprisoning pregnant women who use illegal drugs.

Questions:

a) Suggest an appropriate title for the passage.

b) According to the passage, why did Monica Young fall a victim of drug abuse?

c) How justifiable was the arrest of Monica Young?

(Your answer should not exceed 100 words.)

d) Explain the meaning of the following words and phrases as used in the passage.